WSJ article about the Dean campaign's Internet savvy

[Orangepeel]

Unfortunately, I think you have to pay to read it.

How Dean Staff Keeps The Candidate's Site On the Cutting Edge

Who knows what sort of president Howard Dean might be. He's already proved, though, that he's a great Internet CEO.

<snip>

Mr. Mele said the campaign's heavy use of the Web was a combination of predisposition and coincidence. Early this year, he said, the campaign began noticing that Dean groups were mushrooming on Web sites such as Meetup and Yahoo. Since the campaign had no money, the fact that supporters were organizing themselves online was a godsend.

Mr. Mele and other Web-savvy staffers then urged the campaign to aggressively use the Web, and were encouraged to do so by the candidate and his campaign manager, Joe Trippi. Not only is using the Web far less expensive than a traditional campaign, it also resonates with the candidate's grass-roots, insurgent themes.

<snip>

But Mr. Mele is careful to say that just because the campaign uses Linux, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with other kinds of software. After all, the folks at Microsoft are patriotic Americans, too, and this is a campaign of inclusion


http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106297257526482700,00.html?mod=todays%255Fus%255Fmarketplace%255Fhs